The Lord Chancellor faces renewed pressure to drop or delay plans for overhauling the legal aid scheme with a damning report today from MPs.

The Constitutional Affairs Committee says that if the proposed reforms go ahead, there is a risk to access to justice for the most vulnerable in society.The Constitutional Affairs Committee says that if the proposed reforms go ahead. there is a risk to access to justice for the most vulnerable in society.

Four separate court challenges are being prepared against the Lord Chancellor over plans to overhaul the scheme.

The committee says that the move to bring in competitive tendering for legal aid contracts must be piloted before being brought in. No detailed plans have been published, MPs say; and they raise doubts over whether the expected savings would justify the risks.

Lord Falconer of Thoroton, the Lord Chancellor, wants to move lawyers from “payment by the hour” to fixed fees in the interests of greater efficiency.

Fewer legal aid firms than now are envisaged; it is argued that this will achieve savings, enabling more people to be helped. But today MPs reject the idea that fewer larger legal aid firms would provide a more efficient service and say that to go ahead wihout a pilot project would be “reckless”.

The report further expresses concern about the impact on ethnic minority law firms, which tend to be small and to cater for the ethnic minority communities.

Alan Beith the committee’s Liberal Democrat chairman, said: “This is about access to justice, which could be irreversibly damaged if the reforms have the negative effect we have heard of in evidence to our committee. The proposed times-cales for such radical change are far too short, while the interim fixed fee transition period is risky and unhelpful.

“We are calling on the Government to rethink the timing and properly to pilot competitive tendering to get the evidence that the market-based aproach to legal aid procurement works in practice.”

The Law Society, the professional body for solicitors in England and Wales, has lodged one judicial review and is about to start two others over various aspects of the proposals. It suggests that they will lead to 800 law firms closing and is concerned that there has been inadequate consultation.

The Society of Asian Lawyers and Black Solicitors Network has lodged a judicial review, maintaining that the proposals – which will see law firms compete for legal aid contracts – will restrict access to justice for many minority communities.

“Small firms are much less likely to secure a contract,” the organisations say. “Black and Asian firms will therefore be disproportionately affected.”

Andrew Holroyd, of the Law Society, told the Minority Lawyers Conference at the weekend: “It is difficult to see how the current funding proposals can work without a great deal of risk to solicitors’ practices.”

The Lord Chancellor insists the reforms are necessary to curb rising costs and to create a more efficient system.

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